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August was not the first time I'd wondered about Abdi Salan. Every news report from Lampedusa over the past three years had been an instant reminder of the young Somali who'd landed in 2003 on that tiny Italian island — a dusty, sun-drenched slab of terrain south of Sicily that's among the prime European destinations for illegal-immigrant traffickers. But the news report this August recorded the deaths of more than 60 would-be immigrants off Lampedusa's shores in two successive incidents — a tragedy almost on the scale of Abdi Salan's landfall.

Abdi Salan Mohammed Hassan was one of just 15 survivors among 85 African refugees — almost all Somalia natives — to be rescued on Oct. 19, 2003, after two weeks of drifting in the open sea. It was the worst episode linked to Lampedusa in recent memory, and a remarkable public outpouring followed, including a funeral for the 13 recovered bodies held by the mayor of Rome at the capital's city hall.

Wanting to learn how and why people end up on such a perilous journey, Time went searching for those who'd made it across the Strait of Sicily. That was what brought us to Abdi Salan's bedside in the Palermo Civic Hospital, where he and other survivors had been helicoptered from Lampedusa after their rescue by Italian police. Ten days later, over the course of five hours and with the help of a Somalian translator, Abdi Salan recounted every step of his eight-month journey from his home in war-torn Mogadishu across the Sahara to Libya. There, he boarded a smuggler's boat for what was supposed to be a 48-hour, 275-km final sprint to a better life. Early on the second day, the 12-m fishing boat's engine suddenly gave out. By the tenth day of drifting, he said, "I saw people dying all around me. I was just waiting to die, too."

Two weeks after Time published a seven-page story on his ordeal, Abdi Salan called to thank me, in a halting mix of Italian and English, for the copy of the magazine I'd sent. That was the last contact we'd had. But in the meantime, the flow of immigrants to Lampedusa has only increased — as has debate across Europe about how to control the tide of illegal human trafficking. So far this year, 17,000 people have arrived on Lampedusa, up from 14,000 in 2003. The European Commission estimates that 3,000 people have died this year in waters off the Italian and Spanish coasts.

Watching the TV report in August motivated me to try to find Abdi Salan and see what had become of him. Had he remained in Palermo, out of work but close to those who cured him? Had he found a job in Rome, after arriving in the capital for his asylum request? Or had he perhaps realized a vague aspiration he'd mentioned about going to Britain, where he could follow his favorite English Premier League football team, Manchester United, and go to university?

Whatever storyline I conjured, I could never have imagined the twist that Laura Boldrini of the U.N. High Commission for Refugees sprang on me. She'd indeed found my man — on Lampedusa. When I called him moments later, a voice as unfathomable as his location answered, "Pronto!" What was once a barely audible voice speaking in his native tongue, was now strong and lively Italian. He had returned to Lampedusa nearly two years ago to work at the island's emergency shelter that gives first aid to those arriving much as he had. Two weeks later, I was back on that little island with the last batch of summer tourists for an appointment with the now 26-year-old Abdi Salan, to hear the latest, improbable chapter of his journey.

All smiles, a vigorous youth greets me with very Italian kisses on each cheek. It's as if he has been reinjected with life. Not only has Abdi Salan put on more than 14 kg, but there is a bounce to his step and a natural gregariousness that had obviously been sucked out of him the last time we met. His passion for football is greater than ever, but he's traded in his Man U loyalties for upstart Italian squad Palermo. He also is eager to practice his English, and chat about his favorite rappers 50 Cent and Puff Daddy. But over the next two days, I will discover that this good humor also conceals the pain that propelled him back toward its source, on the beaches of Lampedusa.

He's not the first survivor to work at the island's shelter, but he is the first to carry the memories of such a deadly crossing. It wasn't a quick decision to return. Before that came a summer job as a busboy in Sicily, followed by a stay in Rome to get political asylum and the official working papers that allow him indefinite residence in Italy and eventually to become a European citizen. Then, 14 months after he was plucked to safety, Abdi Salan went to see the Palermo director for the aid group La Misericordia, whom he'd met while in the hospital. He asked if there was a job available at the immigrant aid center that was his first experience of his new life. Not that he could remember it clearly — Abdi Salan arrived there barely conscious and was quickly transferred to Sicily.

His reasons for returning to the stretch of sea that swallowed his companions are as murky as those recollections. He cites the stability of a 40-hour-a-week job, though his fellow survivors found work elsewhere. He also says he wanted to "offer a hand" to other immigrants, but Misericordia has another shelter in Sicily and three others across Italy. I press him repeatedly on what he had hoped to find here. Abdi Salan says simply, if vaguely, "I wanted to try to understand."

Boldrini, the U.N. refugee official, knows Abdi Salan from the center, but learned of his history only after my request. "He doesn't like to talk about it," she says. "Obviously, though, he relives his experience in some way each time a boat comes in." Abdi Salan says it's better not to burden survivors with his own experience, trying instead to cheer them up and answer practical questions before they are sent, within 48 hours, to a different center to begin the process for asylum or deportation.

There is nobody to reciprocate with words of comfort or advice for Abdi Salan. He watches football at the coffee bars, which might be a way to get to know some of the people on the island of 5,500. Still, the young man doesn't have any close friends in Lampedusa, and he observed Ramadan alone in his small apartment above a tourist restaurant. His tightest connection in Italy is to other survivors of his boat, who have spread out in search of work: babysitting in Palermo, a McDonald's job in Rome, hotel cleaning in Florence. His face, already thoughtful in conversation, turns somber at the mention of his parents and five younger siblings he left behind.

"I miss my family," he says. "When you're 20, you just think about all the reasons to leave. But you don't really think about what that means." He calls home once every couple of weeks, and tries to send e-mails when the connection in Lampedusa's one Internet café is functioning. Contact does little to alleviate a deep and remorseless sense of loss. He's spoken several times to the psychologists at the arrival center, but they assure him his sadness is not any clinical disorder: "They tell me I don't have anything — that it's normal because I'm far away from home," he says.

So did his return to the island help him better understand what happened on what he calls "that boat"? It is a simple question of fate, he says, and faith: "For the people who died with that boat, their destiny ended there. For the people who survived, our destiny was to have another opportunity to live. And that's what we must do." For Abdi Salan, that means he's now ready to leave Lampedusa, and plans to ask his boss at Misericordia for a transfer to another center. Perhaps one day he'll embark for northern Europe or America, but says he'll never again "go clandestino." His mind, it seems, is finally engaged with the future as intensely as with the past.

• JEFF ISRAELY | Lampedusa
• TIME first spoke with Abdi Salan back in 2003 following a deadly voyage to Europe. Here's what the Somali migrant did next